Hi All

Some of these questions (actually, probably all of them) are going to be a bit vague and I'm really only after pointers and recommendations rather than exact answers. Also, if I'm asking the wrong questions please feel free to slap me upside the head and let me know.

We have an ERP system that's desktop based. it covers everything: Marketing, Order Processing, Customer Service, Manufacturing and Delivery. At the moment we have surveyors who visit customers for appointments, take down their details (primarily conservatory dimensions - we sell blinds). At present they fill out paper forms which are then input into our system by admins. We would like to allow the surveyors to enter data direct into some kind of moblie device. So here come the questions:-

1. How tightly should we be specifying the device the surveyors will use? I did a bit of java mobile phone development a few years back and the whole thing quickly turned in to a mess of complier asserts. Initially we can supply devices but our surveyors are self employed so I can envisage that we might want them to be able to use their own devices in the future. How strict should we be?
2. Should we develop a fat client or should we use browser technology? I can see browser would give us some platform independence (particularly useful if surveyors use their own devices) but we're primarily a desktop team with a smattering of web skills so a fat client is more 'natural' to us.
3. How should we communicate with our DB? I kind of imagine we're best have a compact DB on each device and then synching it to the main DB on a nightly process or something like that. Is that the right aproach or could we communicate with the main DB live?
4. What other sneaky mouse traps await our toes in the dark? (yep, I've been playing Baldurs Gate 2 again)